POSTED 7/8/13


STEAMWORLD DIG

Image & Form
3DS/eShop (also on PS4/PSN + Vita/PSN, PC)

Q: What would you get if you put Sid Vicious in a sauna?

A: A very smelly sauna – poor Sid’s been dead for 34 years!

Or, of course, you’d get a steam punk. Sticky-tape the two words together and you’re vibe-connected for this fabby concoction that takes chunks of Boulder Dash, Dig Dug, Spelunker and Minecraft, smushes them together, adds its own stuff and comes out smelling of dirt. But that’s a pleasant “Aah...” dirt smell, not a poopy “Ewwy!” dirt smell.

You’re a mining steambot (yes, ‘bot’ – no ‘Karma Chameleon’ video props here) with the designation ‘Rusty’. Mercifully that isn’t a condition report, as there’s too much mining to undertake for any oxidation tolerance. Your travels have led you to the sleepy mining town of Tumbleton, where once your daddy did done dug. So, you decide to hang around, and soon really dig the place. Literally...

You see, under Tumbleton are huge tracts of riches, potentially painful phenomena and handy technomalogical enhancements that your daddy did done dream up. The deeper you go, the more odd things you’ll encounter, along with an increasing cavalcade of marvellous toys and valuabler valuables. You can trade this swag for dollars up above (teleporters rock (heh)) , which you can use to gradually upgrade your initially puny pick and anything else that you may gradually bolster your digability with. The drill’s a good example, but it’s steam powered, so watch your water supply...

The catacomby earth beneath Tumbleton offers hours + hours + hours x oodles of stuff to dig, and to say that it’s just kinda fun is like saying Sid’s ‘My Way’ cover was just kinda fun.

Sid’s ‘My Way’ was, of course, a super-fun, addictive and inspired cover, and SteamWorld Dig is super-fun, addictive and inspired gameified manual labour that no 3DS should miss out on.

You dig?

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